The Burning of the Dummy

A new year has arrived, right on schedule. It is nice to know that some things don’t change. A New Year’s Day activity that I knew in my youth was the burning of the dummy. I believe this tradition began in Ecuador. My exposure to it came by way of some kids down the block named the Kennedy’s. The Kennedy’s would have a New Year’s Day party every year. Mrs. Kennedy would prepare an array of delicious finger foods and tins of Christmas cookies to feast on.

Around the end of each year, Dev and Chris Kennedy would set out to create a dummy. This dummy would consist of old clothes and be stuffed, like the Scare Crow on the Wizard of Oz, with crumpled up old newspaper. They would also implant Black Cat firecrackers and various monetary coins within their creation.

The dummy was a symbol of the past year. The coins represented good fortune for the coming year. Setting the dummy on fire represented the letting go of the past and all the bad things that had occurred during the year. When the dummy had burned and was just a pile of ashes, all the kids would search the ashes with metal yard rakes to try and find the lucky coins. Finding one of those blackened beauties was a real treat and nice keepsake, after it cooled off.

In those days, it was college football’s biggest day and everyone would watch some of the major bowl games. Since the Rose Bowl was a perennial favorite, the dummy burning would usually occur in the
late afternoon before the game. The dummy was usually soaked in a flammable material, say gasoline, before it was set on fire. The Kennedy’s backyard beneath a large Maple tree served as the backdrop for the ceremony.

With the late afternoon sun setting, the party goers were summoned out into the cold for the lighting of the dummy. Sometimes speeches were given and goodbyes were said to the year past. Then, with a flick of a Bic lighter, the dummy would catch fire. As it burned, random firecrackers would go off blowing off parts of the body. The Kennedy boys were always at the ready with their tending rakes to corral any fiery projectiles back into the arena. When the explosions had stopped and the ashes had cooled, the small kids were allowed to try and find the lucky coins. Any undiscovered coins either remained for prosperity or became like bullets when the lawnmower came by in the summer.

The Kennedy’s over time had to remind the neighbor kids that this was in fact supposed to be a family party and that like teenagers still trick or treating, our welcome had run its course. I never knew of anyone that burned a dummy on New Year’s Day before the Kennedy’s and have not met anyone since.

Maybe this year I’ll start up the tradition here in Colorado. Since this past year has been one filled with challenges and tragedies, I for one would like to usher it out with a size 11 boot well placed for emphasis. Anybody got some coins I could use for this year’s good luck?

REI Winter Gear Clinics

I recently attended a couple of clinics about snowshoeing and cross country skiing at the REI in Fort Collins. Gerry Cashman and Mark Sickles led the programs and opened my eyes to a whole new world of equipment for these activities. I was amazed at how high tech everything has become. When you live and play in the Rocky Mountains, this equipment is necessary if you plan on heading out for some adventures in the winter.

The days of gliding along on flat cross country ski trails on the prairies of Illinois are long gone. I started cross country skiing on a pair of hickory wood skis that had metal coil spring bindings. The poles had oversized baskets made up of leather spoke radials. I think these skis were used for downhill skiing in the 1950’s. I can’t imagine trying to downhill ski on them, but they worked just fine for the gentle slope of our backyard. They were also good for traveling in deep snow, sort of like snowshoes.

I acquired my first real cross country skis from L.L. Bean 25 years ago. They were 210 cm long and made in Norway. The poles were 155 cm long and made in Finland. And the boots were made in a country that no longer exists, Yugoslavia. Compared to the old wooden ones, these narrow skis were as lite as a feather and cut thru the snow like butter. I can only imagine how efficient the equipment of today must be.

Gerry and Mark had all the latest and greatest gear at the clinics at REI. The gear is now tailored for the specific activity you are going to use it for. So, before you throw a pair of snowshoes or skis in the car and head out for a day of fun in the outdoors, you need to ask yourself some questions. For example, are you going to go to a golf course to cross country ski or are you heading up to Cameron Pass? Will you be skiing on man-made trails or will you be breaking your own? Will you be at a resort or in the back country? The answer to these questions will help you pinpoint what gear will be best suited for your activity.

The gear you need includes what type of clothing you will wear. 3 layers of clothing on your top half are recommended. What the layers are made of is very important. You need to stay warm, but not too warm. You don’t want to get hot and sweaty. In order to stay comfortable and dry, you need to wick the moisture away from your body. You also need to have breathable wind proof and water proof outerwear.

Since mountain weather can and does change rapidly, you also need to be prepared for the worst at all times. Carrying things like extra socks, clothes, food, duct tape, paper clips, and a space blanket are essential to peace of mind when you venture away from civilization on your adventures.

If you have never snow shoed or cross country skied and would like to try it, I recommend you rent some equipment from REI. Another option if you want to try snowshoeing would be to go to Rocky Mountain National Park on Saturday January 14th between 10:00 am and 3:00 pm and try some of the hundreds of demo snowshoes that will be available for free.
Finally, I recommend you talk to the experts at REI before heading up to the hills on your next adventure. They will help you enjoy your outdoor experiences more during the winter season here in Colorado.

The Taking of the Tree

I once read a story about a cowboy that went out and cut his own Christmas tree down every December 21st on the winter solstice. It was called “The taking of the tree”. In this story, the cowboy spoke of this annual event like it was a spiritual thing. He would search for the perfect tree, cut it down around sunset, and drag it to his cabin in the woods. There he would decorate it and begin to celebrate the season of Christmas.

In some ways, we are all a little like that cowboy. We search for our perfect tree. We struggle with the logistics of getting it home, and then we kick off our Christmas season by trimming it. When I was little, my family would get a nice Scotch pine tree from the parking lot of the Catholic Church in town. We would stuff the tree in the trunk of the car in order to get it home. We would then have to cut off a chunk of the bottom with a long bladed handsaw. You had to wrestle with the tree and try and balance it on a concrete step in order to cut it. Then we would place the tree in a bucket of hot water in the garage until it was time to bring it in and decorate it.

To this day, every time I catch a whiff of a Scotch pine though, it immediately brings me back to my grade school days at Crestwood Elementary School in Northbrook, Illinois. During the holiday season, Christmas trees and wreaths were actually delivered to our school. Classroom by classroom and floor by floor, the smell wafted up through the school as the janitor distributed them. That smell was something. It smelled like Christmas.

Real trees were eventually replaced in our house by a fake tree. My mother had had enough of the left over needles from the tree getting stuck in out wool carpeting. She also was not fond of the needles clogging up the hose on the vacuum back then. So we learned to live with an artificial tree that resided in the attic for 11 months of the year. As the fake tree patiently waited to come alive each year, I would bug my mom to get the tree down so we could decorate it; especially after “A Charlie Brown Christmas” aired. The fake tree did not smell and was kind of lame, but we made do.

Heading into my high school years, the fake tree was once again replaced by a real tree. Pier pressure was the culprit this time. It seemed everyone in the neighborhood was trying to see who could get the best tree each year. It was like a contest. Scotch pine trees were a thing of the past as the Douglas fir and Frasier fir were the “it” trees of the day. They were much fuller and much more expensive. Their smell didn’t seem to last as long though as the Scotch pines.

As I got older, my homes had higher ceilings, thus the need for taller Christmas trees. The trees were in the ten foot plus range and they were heavy. Luckily, the service in the tree lots increased along with the price of the trees. At local nurseries here in Colorado, the people are usually very friendly and will come down on the price if you ask them. They will also cut a fresh slice off the bottom of the tree with a chainsaw, bag up your tree, and tie it down on your vehicle.

So as you head out this year to find your perfect tree, remember your trees of Christmas past. May they smell like the Scotch pines of my youth.

The Old Barn

My family and I recently spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. This one time small ranching community has been transformed into a world renowned ski resort just in the span of my lifetime. One of the symbols of Steamboat is a barn located near the base of the ski hill. It belonged to the Moore family when they ran their ranching operation before Ski Town USA was born. This old barn evokes a lot of feelings when I look at it.

When you live back east and see this picture of what looks like the old west with a rustic barn covered in snow and a ski resort in the background, it makes you want to catch the next plane to Denver and strap on the boards. It evokes horses galloping in snow up to their chests with cowboys in hot pursuit. It feels western. The barn is a relic of times gone by. It almost appears to be housing the past as it stubbornly pushes back at the progress of man.

Besides this barn, Steamboat is also known for its Champaign powder snow. The term Champaign powder comes from an observation a skier once made while skiing in deep powder at Steamboat. He said the feather light snow tickled your nose the way Champaign bubbles do and the name stuck. A new marketing campaign for tourism was born.

On our visit, I got to experience some Champaign powder up on Rabbit Ears Pass just east of Steamboat Springs. I went snowshoeing at a place called the West Summit Trail. This trail sits on the west side of the pass at about 9,400 feet. I chose the west side of the pass because it is designated for cross country skiing and snow shoeing only. The east side of the pass is open to snow mobiles as well.

The snow on the pass was already two and a half feet deep. It was so light that it felt like you were walking on pillows when you went off the packed down trail. You didn’t realize how deep the snow really was until you took your snowshoes off and tried to walk around in it. You instantly sank like a stone up to your waist. I took a break on top of a ridge and had a Gatorade seated in the sink hole I created when I took off my snow shoes.

The snow on the ski hill at Steamboat was not as nice. With only roughly twenty percent of the runs open and a base of twenty-one inches or so, the hill got shredded pretty fast when we skied exposing a slick, packed down surface that was challenging. I think they call it icy back east. In any event, the locals didn’t seem to mind and went flying by us with ease. Well, a couple of us anyway. Our daughter flew down the hill with reckless abandon. My wife and I were a little more conservative and fought the hill most of the day. It still felt invigorating though as you tried to keep from sliding off the mountain.

And speaking of sliding off the mountain, the old barn hangs on and remains like a dinosaur from a prehistoric land. Developers have tried to get rid of it. There are condos across the street from it. But the old girl still stands. Her doors are closed to the outside world. Inside, I’ll bet the old west still exists. You can probably here cowboys and horses and all kinds of things western if you were to put your ear to the outside of the barn. At least I like to think so.

Bon Hiver Fort Collins

One of my favorite TV series from the 1990’s was a show called Northern Exposure. The show was set in the mythical town of Cicely, Alaska. The main character was Joel Fleishman, a young doctor from New York who comes to Cicely to pay back the cost of his medical school paid for by the state of Alaska by serving as the town doctor. The show explores what life in Alaska is like compared to what Joel was accustomed to back in New York.

As you might expect, the season of winter and its challenges are a part of the show. Joel’s female interest on the show is a bush pilot named Maggie O’Connell. Maggie helps Joel appreciate his new home by marveling at the natural world. One episode the two of them go for a walk at dusk and it begins to snow. Maggie turns to Joel and says “bon hiver Fleishman” and Joel says back “bon hiver O’Connell”. The scene fades with the falling snow and the onset of night.

This scene reminds me of how it felt to be excited at the prospect of snow as a kid back in Illinois. However, snow before Thanksgiving was almost unheard of and a white Christmas was extremely rare. Believe it or not, it rained more times than not back then. I think what was so appealing about the s word was the fun that could be had in it. Now as adults, we tend to only see the negative effects of snow. You have to shovel it, drive in it, walk in it, and put up with it until it melts.

Our recent early season snowstorms are a perfect example of this change in attitude. I was not a happy camper when 12” of wet snow turned my neighborhood into a war zone. The trees after the storm looked like we had had a tornado. It made me very sad. Sad to see such destruction and genuinely aggravated with the subsequent 9” storm a week later. This was a weird feeling. It may have been the first time I was not glad to see a snow event.

Back in the day, if we did get enough snow to play in, we had a pair of 1950’s wooden downhill skis that we got to navigate with. These strange inventions had coiled springs that you clamped your heals into along with some leather straps that secured your fate with. The skis were way too big for us, but they did work just like snowshoes in deep snow.

My winter adventures continued to expand as downhill skiing was explored in the tiny realms of Wilmot Mountain in Wisconsin. Just getting on a chairlift back then was a supreme challenge that prompted thumb cramps for days due to the icy ramp up to the chair access for rolling back over other peoples skis was a faux pas that was to be avoided at all costs.

Now, early season skiing here in Colorado is a little bit of a tease as well. With very few open runs and spotty snow, the skiing is crowded at best and dangerous at worst. We wait patiently though for more of the white stuff to fall so that more runs will open.

So what does “bon hiver” mean? It is a French phrase that means "good winter" or "have a good winter" and I hope this year you have one. Bon hiver Fort Collins.

The Trail Less Traveled

Thanksgiving is a time for family and friends to gather and reflect on things they are thankful for. Included on my grateful for list this year is the opportunity to write this column for The Coloradoan. In a photo shopped world where information is routinely manufactured to advance someone’s agenda, I choose to share stories about real life and let the chips fall where they may. The response to this column has been overwhelmingly positive which has inspired me to continue to write.

When a recording artist attains a certain amount of success, they usually put out a greatest hits album. Looking back on the last 6 months of writing, certain columns of mine do stand out. The very first one back in May incorporated the theme of the most interesting man in the world. There were also stories about lightning, trees falling, me falling, bear attacks, elk attacks, famous friends, and of course, hiking.

My instructional columns in the beginning soon morphed into stories of past and present adventures. Nobody seemed to mind, so each week, 600 words or so were carefully crafted together to communicate what I had to say. In an Andy Rooney sort of way, I noticed things on and off the trail. For example, did you ever notice how people enjoy reading about someone else’s mistakes when and if they live to tell about them?

On the other hand, my wife thinks I have an odd fascination with bear attacks. At the same time, she can’t understand how I am unable to watch medical shows on TV because of all the gory stuff they show. From my perspective, the natural world order is one thing and the human being world order is quite another. So as we move from the end of the hiking season into the beginning of the winter season, I will try to keep entertaining my audience with observations from the outdoors.

In nature, winter tends to cull the herd of the weak and the sick. For humans, winter sometimes is a dark and cold time. A Kung Fu master once said,( through my stories this winter, I will try and) “Be like the sun, and what is within you will warm the earth.” I hope my writing helps you to enjoy the day and adds something to your Sunday morning.

I plan on skiing and snow shoeing this winter and will incorporate those topics into the column. I will sign off today with a poem either about rugged individualism or a hiking friend’s indecision. Either way, it is one of my step daughter Mallory’s favorites:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost

Happy Thanksgiving.

The Big Buck

I grew up across the street from an 80-acre tract of land known as the Somme Woods Forest Preserve of Cook County Illinois. For a young boy, these woods were filled with adventure. Stately oak trees hundreds of years old stood aligned like pawns on a chess board horizontal to the dividing road and forest entrance. Beyond the oaks were scattered stands of sumac. Fields of tall grasses lay intertwined with marshes and small seasonal ponds throughout the mostly flat landscape.

Trails were carved out by our daily travels. Tree frogs would greet us with their melodic song each spring. Red wing black birds would stake out their claims on the marshes. Mallard ducks would inhabit the small ponds. Fireflies would dominate the night appearing just over the fields in summer. As we got older, white tailed deer moved into the area. In the fall, the thought of seeing a buck deer would have us combing the area for hours. They were elusive though and seldom seen.

I am not a hunter in the sense of killing animals for sport. Back then, some of my friends were hunters and I wanted to simulate the experience. There was a small marsh in the middle of the woods that we planned on pretending to build a duck blind from and pretend to hunt from with our toy rifles. When the day came one gray November day to go sit out in the cold and pretend to hunt ducks, my fake experience was cancelled due to a previously planned trip to Grandma’s house.

I was so mad that I kicked the porcelain bathtub and almost broke my foot when my mom insisted that I get in the car and skip the fake hunting trip in the woods. To this day, I can’t figure out what the lure was and why this make believe reenactment was so important to me. Sitting on cold and wet ground in the middle of the woods in November pretending to hunt does not sound fun to me now.

As I got older, after that episode I am not sure if I can use the word “matured” here, I looked forward every year to early November and my quest to see the big buck in the woods across the street. Back then, I was not yet into photography because if I were, my camera would have been what I would have been hunting with.

In the late afternoon, I would venture far into the woods back where the crows squawking would sometime give you the creeps. As the light faded, sometimes I would build a fire and wait for the big buck to appear. As darkness fell, sometimes a buck would calmly walk by. Year after year, I would return to the same places that I had seen one. It was amazing how consistent they were. One year, I came around a bend on a trail and was within about ten feet of a buck. He looked at me and I looked at him and slowly backed up out of his way.

There was also the time that a certain field seemed like it was going to become a battle ground. Several bucks appeared from the fringes and looked as if they were going to square off in a duel. It was then that the big buck rose up from his day bed in the middle of the field to display his rack and signal to the other less mature males that he was top dog around there. It was quite a sight and to think he had been there all along just waiting for his chance to strut his stuff. If I had had the photography equipment I have now, he would have been quite a shot.